La lluvia en Sevilla es una maravilla!

Morning all!

Just a quick one to apologise for not having written in a while, time goes by so fast! Quinny was out here all last week so I was very busy galavanting around Seville with him, will update on what we did when I have more time (start school in about 5 minutes!)...Basically involved gorging on amazing tapas every night and seeing the sights, going to the beach and many other things!

It's shot up to at least 40 degrees during the day this week, whereas previously it was a mere 36 or so (trust me, you notice the difference!)..It rained on Tuesday night though, which was amazing (honestly!) - Seville gets on average 1mm of rainfall in the whole of July, so that would appear to be it for this year..! August usually gets more so I'm actually praying for a shower! I know I'll be sorry when I get back to England, but right now any chance of cooling the weather down a tad doesn't go amiss...

Have joined the gym this week to work off the tapas, so that's occupying the large stretch of afternoon (when everything stops for at least a 3 hour siesta, and I either sleep, which is boring, or get quite bored..!) that I have free. Going to a Spinning class in Spanish this evening, should be interesting..! Ruth arrives tomorrow night for the weekend :D so am really looking forward to seeing her and showing her around, although I have already seen most of the sights (a couple of times lol) and I'm anticipating a very action-packed weekend! Should be great though :)

Had better run to school, thankfully I only live round the corner!!

Loads of love to all, will try and be on Skype soon (will be on tonight to speak to Quinny for a bit, but will try and be on during the evenings next week, if the Internet will stop being moody!)

See you soon! xxxxxxx

Viva España!

Ello again!

Man, already nearly a week since I last updated?! And so much has happened..! I really hope I can remember most of it to tell you...

On Sunday: We went to the beach, the nearest place being Matalascañas, an hour away by coach. What a scorcher it was; definitely a good plan to get some coastal breeze and have the sea on hand for dipping in! Despite lying in the baking 40-something degree sun for most of the day, I still have comparatively little tan and was often asked by my Italian housemate why I'm so 'blanquita' (affectionate term for pasty!) Though I'm trying to remind myself that I still have another 6 weeks to brown some more, and that my housemates have been here a lot longer and have thus seen a lot more sun than I have! Plenty of time to catch up :p

This week has gone SO fast in hindsight; can't believe it's the end of the second week already! Has largely been spent much in the same vein of the first week: classes in the morning, feeling rather tired from late nights/little sleep due to the heat, which is soon and pretty invariably rectified by a café manchado (milky coffee - still pretty strong for me!) and a tostada con tomate y aceite (toasted bread with tomato pulp and olive oil - a traditional Catalan dish they call pa amb tomàquet in Barcelona, but which has a pretty identical counterpart here, which I was overjoyed to find!!) and a chat in our half an hour break. Then home to some lunch and monging about sunning myself on the roof terrace/having a siesta and reading/doing my homework (10 mins tops - the best kind of work! Grammar as well - I'm actually in heaven lol!), before catching up with whichever housemates I may bump into, going for wanders around the city and then dining later in the evening before a World Cup game at the Irish pub/local bar. Perfecto :D Went to see the Holland/Uruguay game on Tuesday with all my Dutch housemates (they were over the moon, naturally!), followed by the Spain/Germany game last night for Happy Miércoles with my coursemates and housemates at a bar down the road - went for a wander and some drinks afterwards to lap up the elation in the air, and managed to get some pretty extensive Spanish conversation practice into the bargain! So I'm pretty tired today, and have given myself a day off and time to get an early night by having a Skype chat with Quinny :)

Today was the day of my coursemates' graduation (the ones on the BA, who thus finish a year before me) and I found a link online to a live webcam feed of the ceremony, which was brilliant :) so proud of them all, emotional times! Going to miss them all so much; thankfully several are still hanging around up North looking for jobs and the like, so there should still be plenty of drinks/coffees/lunches lined up next year. Speaking of line-up - Quinny emailed me a gig listing the other day of a host of potential bands/comedians we might be interested in, so we've now got quite a hectic entertainment calendar lined up for my return right up until January! :D It's gonna be fantastic, a welcome break from the workload I'm beginning to dread next year! Oh well, thankfully I get a real summer (and how!!) :D

While waiting for the next graduates to come on screen, I went for a wander around the city with my 2 new housemates who haven't seen much of Seville yet. We got an Italian ice cream from my favourite sweet shop and wandered down to the river - Seville is so beautiful :) Made it home in time to see my fresh-faced clever friends shaking hands with the Vice-Chancellor of Manchester University and thus ending their 4 year adventure. End of an era :(! So glad I got to see it though :)

Vicki and her boyfriend arrive tomorrow at the start of their 3 week interrailing trip around Europe (like the one I did with Ruth last summer), so I'm taking them out for tapas (probably with my coursemate Rony, who's showing us her favourite tapas place which is apparently excellent - although I've been for tapas a couple of times, she's been here for 5 months and apparently it helps to know where to go!) and then we'll spend Saturday as a 'día de guiri' (tourist day) seeing the sights of Seville :) So excited to begin what will be a spree of visitors for pretty much every remaining weekend until I leave..! Can't quite believe I've been here the best part of 2 weeks already..Madness!

Keep in touch, will keep this updated as best as possible - it's bizarre, although the lifestyle here is among the most relaxed I've ever experienced, it still seems to move at a mile a minute!

Loads of love to you all :D Sending some sun your way! xxxxxxxx

Hello again!

Just when you thought the travelling had ended....here I am in Seville, doing a Spanish course for 8 weeks over the summer! Have been here since Monday, sorry for lack of updating, internet issues and general busy-ness have prevented me getting a chance to write on here! Will give you a brief overview of the adventure so far...

Firstly, I should say that I was meant to fly out on Friday the 25th (despite my course not starting til Monday and my accommodation contract not til the Sunday afternoon....stupid Ryanair not flying here at weekends!). While my flight didn't leave Liverpool until 2pm, I had to get there by way of a convoluted taxi/bus journey, not to mention several hours early, thus needing to get up at 7am. However.... at 5.30am on the Friday, I woke up and promptly started violently throwing up from what can only be assumed was food poisoning from the restaurant (Manchester's Café Rouge) we went to the night before :(. I carried on being sick on about an hourly basis until 12pm, by which time I was meant to be at the airport (having survived potentially a 2 hour bus journey due to roadworks). Needless to say I didn't brave the trip; I didn't really fancy ploughing through the coach's sick bags without a familiar face for comfort and possibly making everyone else ill! I'm so glad I didn't make the trip, in the state I was in it probably would've been horrific, and, due to my not being able to check in to my house until the Sunday lunchtime, I was meant to be staying in a studio on the outskirts of the centre for the weekend, on my own, without internet. What a fun weekend that would've been! So instead I rearranged my flight for first thing Monday morning, spent Friday in bed in Manchester watching TV and recovering, then by that evening I felt a lot better, leaving me free to spend the weekend in Milton Keynes with Quinny for our friend's birthday :)

The flight on Monday was at 6.50am, again from Liverpool. Not the most dignified hour..! After a 3am start, I finally arrived in Seville at 12pm, again having to navigate the public transport system in a new and exciting city. I went straight to my language school, where I was greeted with a welcome pack and then took a Spanish language level test straight away (on little sleep and after a journey, this came as a bit of a shock!) but managed to score 100% on the test..! The teacher wanted to put me in the highest group, but as there isn't anyone at the school taking that level yet (C1), I'm in the B2 group for the moment, with 6 other people. The level is perfectly fine as I'm trying to remember all my Spanish at the moment and the other students are largely very good, so it's a good introduction rather than being thrown in the deep end!

I then made my way to my new house round the corner, Calle Viriato 12. I've been finding out that the house has quite a reputation around here; there seems to be no way of knowing for sure how many people live here at any one time; when I moved in it was about 15 people..! Needless to say the place is huge..I was greeted by 2 French students, who were surprised when I could speak to them in French! My room turned out to be on the roof of the house; a gorgeous little room, but I hadn't considered just how hot it would get up there! I had a fan, but it turned out to be bows and arrows against the lightning. The landlady had left me a note saying I could move downstairs when the French guys left a few days later, which I initially wasn't bothered about, but after a night trying to sleep in what must have been about 25 degree heat at least, I quickly reconsidered!

I started school at 9am on Tuesday; the class lasts until 1pm with a break from 10.45 to 11.15. The first half is taught by a Spanish bloke called Jesús (different pronunciation from English..), who made a joke about turning 33 this year (today, in fact!) and it being a bad year to be called Jesus...a lovely guy! His class is a lot of fun. Then after the break Manuela takes over, a very smiley and heavily pregnant Spanish lady who has been really encouraging (as has everyone, to be fair). The first day of class dragged a bit (it's hard to concentrate on Spanish for 4 hours at the same desk!) but it's got better and better ever since, we cover interesting topics and have some really good conversations. My Spanish feels like it's come on leaps and bounds already, and I've only been here just under a week!

I think this is partially down to having to/choosing to speak Spanish to most people in the house as well; off the top of my head there are 4 Dutch girls and one Dutch guy, one Finnish guy and one girl, 2 or 3 Italian blokes, a French guy (but who I usually speak Spanish to as then we can both practise!), a Turkish woman who usually lives in America and there was a Danish girl, Jennifer, who I became close friends with and who left this morning after a 2 week stay. Thus Spanish is largely the common language; a few of my housemates are beginners so I tend to speak English to them but most people choose to use Spanish as it's become habit and is good practice! There are 2 more people arriving tomorrow, I think one is a Finnish girl, not sure about the other. It's expected to get pretty quiet over the summer due to the extreme heat which often drives people away from Seville, especially in August, but the Italian blokes are staying until the 10th August (10 days before I leave on the 20th) and several are staying until the end of July. A few of the Dutch girls are leaving on Wednesday after being here since February, so we had a party in their honour last night, which was AWESOME! We all made a dish each (I cobbled together a sort of chorizo and vegetable pasta salad) and had a big buffet-style banquet on the terrace at night; what made it even better was that we'd decided on a Greek gods and goddesses theme and were all dressed up in 'togas' made from our bedsheets! I was Aphrodite :p (photos do exist, I'll try and get them up somewhere for people to see!) It was truly epic. We drank lots of wine and I retired to bed pretty early, around 4am (most people went on to a club shortly after..! I was sadly too knackered after getting up at 8am for school and having slept 5 hours the night before...it's been a long week! Most people here have jobs or study but often don't seem to get up very early, the house is eerily silent when I'm getting ready for school!) Apparently there was some scandal this morning, when some angry Spanish neighbours approached us around 7.30am after discovering the street full of shattered glass from bottles that my drunk friends had decided to smash up after coming home from the club...more news on those developments later when the landlady comes round for a 'chat'....Never a dull moment!

I've been kept busy the past week, mostly with school and seeing the sights with Jennifer - as she was only here for a short time she had a lot to cram into her visit, which I welcomed! Seville is such a labyrinthine city, it's best navigated by foot as it's quite compact, but the roads are so windy and look so similar that I still have no idea where I am half the time, and carry a map everywhere! We went to the stunning Cathedral and climbed its tower (which made me jealous of the people with rooftop swimming pools!), went for some gorgeous handmade sweets (my new favourite shop!), drank vino con naranja (supposedly red wine with what we thought was orange juice, but tasted more like a strong orange liqueur - deadly at 4pm!) and browsed some of the ludicrously cheap shops. We also went to the flamenco museum the other night, to have a look round and see a performance - I'm actually in love with flamenco now! It was stunning, and I managed to get myself a handheld fan which is an absolute necessity in these temperatures. We went for drinks on Wednesday night with our school - they do a night every Wednesday called 'Happy Miércoles' (Wednesday in Spanish) to get everyone together and socialise. The drink of the season here is 'tinto de verano' ('summer red wine') which is half red wine, half lemonade, with ice - ultimate refreshment for around €1,50! The following night it was my coursemate Rony's 21st birthday (a lovely chatty Israeli girl who is really good at languages) and we went to a tapas bar for dinner (DELICIOUS and so cheap!!) followed by going to a famous local bar, which is huge inside and allows you to bring your own instruments and play to each other. Rony's friends brought a Spanish guitar, and one of them played flamenco tunes while the other sang. They were fantastic, up there with the professionals! It was a perfect, relaxed evening, just like evenings in Seville should be. Needless to say, I love it here!!

Today I'm pretty much making the most of having the day to myself and no classes to attend, largely by having a lie in (as much as possible due to the heat!) and bumming around sunbathing and reading. I might go and explore the town in a bit, though I have to say I still feel more comfortable with someone else with me who knows the way home! Seville does have a metro, but it has about 4 stops and I haven't yet found one that is very near here.. may look into that. The Finnish girls are on about getting the bus to the coast tomorrow, which I'm very up for - cooling water and a sea breeze sound good to me! Other than that I'm enjoying relaxing after a long and eventful first week; as the Dutch girls told me last night, I've certainly 'landed with my nose in the butter' (been very lucky)!! Vicki (my coursemate from Manchester) and her boyfriend arrive on Friday for the night and Saturday, so we're gonna go out for a meal and spend Saturday doing the Brit tourist thing - am really looking forward to it, am nowhere near finished exploring the city yet! Quinny comes to visit on the 16th for 10 days, which will be awesome :D we hope to go to the coast for the weekend or something, there are so many things I want to show him!

Had a bit of a scare last night just before the toga party, when my phone ran out of credit and I tried to top up but my bank card was declined, whereas it normally works fine and is perfectly in date - it wouldn't let me do it online either. Luckily KT was online and mum wired me some money to put on my phone as a temporary measure - I couldn't even ring the bank to inquire, or even have them ring me as it costs me money to receive calls too! I tried to forget about it (quite successfully) for the night and then mercifully managed to sort it out this morning - turns out the fraud company were just being extra cautious as I was using it from another country (even though I didn't have that happen to me at all last year while I was touring Europe..). Oh well, crisis averted! Even so, I have some euros in cash here, so it wouldn't have been the end of the world, but it's always good to know you have access to some money if you need it! Never mind, panic over! :)

Love to all and let me know if/when you plan on visiting - please do, it's such an amazing city and I'd love to share it with you!

Keep in touch!! Ooo, my address is:

Nicola Tomlinson

C/ Viriato 12

41003 Sevilla

SPAIN

I'm pretty sure I can get post here (we have a letterbox but I don't have a key, maybe the landlady gets it out for us..?!) but yeah, if you fancy writing, feel free! I'll try and be on Skype most evenings but the internet is still a bit capricious at times, will keep in touch as best I can, probably mostly via here so keep your eyes peeled!

Loads of love :) xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Casse-toi et ton système éducatif!

France, I like your: literature, your food and your architecture. You can keep your: weather (mainly aimed at Paris), your vibe, your pervy men, your 'Keep off the grass' parks, your traffic and transport in general, and your education system!

Latest news from the Sorbonne: Lectures restarted yesterday. Which I was informed of: yesterday. From my chat with my German friend Amelie, a fellow Erasmus student, over hot chocolate (yummy!) and croissants (also very yummy) this afternoon, we have established that the semester will be made up for over the next FOUR weeks (bearing in mind this semester was meant to be what, 12/13?), followed by an exam period of ONE week, in which ALL exams will be crammed in back-to-back. (Amelie worked out that, if she were to take said exams, she would have THREE in a single DAY on a Monday, from 12-2, 2-4 (yep, that's right, no break!) and 5-7pm. THEN she would have her next one on Tuesday morning!! A JOKE, I ask you..!! We both felt so fortunate that, luckily owing to our respective universities (Dresden and Manchester) being understanding about the situation we have been put in, we do not have to partake in this month of hell...and then proceeded to talk about how nothing like this would ever happen in our respective countries, lol. It's true though..! PAH..

I went to her building afterwards with her (some of her lectures have been on, so she has some essays to write at the moment), and the place was strewn with painted banners and scrawled signs with slogans like "SARKO, CASSE-TOI ET TES LOIS" - '"Sarko" (President Nicolas Sarkozy's somewhat derogatory nickname), get lost with your laws', amongst others. I read some of the literature they'd printed off from www.liberation.fr , a French newspaper which has published numerous articles on the progression of the Sorbonne strike, and vowed to read more of these later to keep abreast of the goings-on, before picking up a couple of free magazines lying around and wandering to the Jardin de Luxembourg near by. On an upside, the Palace is truly gorgeous, and the gardens looked beautiful, even in the cloudy weather we've had today following the brilliant summer weather of the weekend and the thunderous storm which abruptly drew that to a close last night; I pulled up a chair next to one of the central patches of grass with a view of the Palais and sat to read The Da Vinci Code (my latest read; I started it earlier after a good year or two of promising to start it and am loving it! Reading it in Paris makes it all the more vivid and exciting - also probably why this entry sounds a little more cogent and literary than my usual mutterings :$). Unfortunately the wind and cold drew me away from this after not very long; it was simply too cold to enjoy it! But yes, very pleasant to spend some time in the gardens and to finally see the Palace itself. It's been a really nice, relaxing, leisurely Parisian day :)

Love you all, can't believe it's my return on Sunday!! Though it is days like today that make me think I really am going to miss this place....well, some aspects of it anyway :p 

xxxxxxxxxx

La France

What I will miss about Paris:

- baguettes for 38 cents

- Riz au lait a la vanille, yum!

- so many places to explore

- crepes

- waffles..

- croque monsieurs!!

- The Marais

- the beautiful streets and the quirky places to explore

- the swordfish at Barbershop

- the bountiful supply of French books at Carrefour

- French onion soup, especially at La Khedive

- French film trips in Place d'Italie

- cheap cheap cheap wine, especially Panache from Carrefour!

- just....Carrefour..!

What I will not miss:

- the pervy men who have meant I have only worn a skirt/dress once and regretted it, and have thus not since March...

- the extortionate prices for everything, especially bottles of water..!!

- the expensiveness of the Metro and being pretty far from the action

- a large number of the Parisians and the way they must have right of way on the pavement/in their cars/look down on you

- the dull dress sense here (I'm serious! I haven't seen a colour other than black, white, navy or beige for weeks!)

Paris is definitely a city of contrasts....find the areas you like and you're sorted. Luckily I have come to do that, but unfortunately they happen to be pretty far from where I'm living....also, I will definitely not miss the ridiculous Parisian public transport and its mind of its own! After this year, I don't think I will ever complain about English admin again lol, as I said when I came back from Barcelona..! I have had a great time, just unfortunate circumstances (as Manchester uni recently referred to them as in an email to us) have conspired against my plans. Oh well, an experience is an experience....

xxxxxxx

La France

Nice in a Nutshell:

- wide streets

- gorgeous sunshine/weather in general!

- uncomfy (but pretty) beach

- Place Masséna = niiiice (minus overly friendly men, urgh)

- cute French cat, cute but psycho...and also set off my allergies..

- good pharmacy with amazing miracle cream for allergies

- very expensive cafés

- awesome fountains

- Wayne's club = SO much fun..the most hilarious and fun sweatpit I have probably ever been in

- Ma Nolan's = legendary pub

- much more relaxed and chilled out than Paris, but still the occasional pervy man. 

Cannes: film stuff, ugly building, no celebs :( gorgeous weather, lovely promenade. Nice cafes behind the scenes. Exciting atmosphere :)

Monaco: Tiny and mental. So many yachts! Gorgeous place, too hilly for me to be bothered walking much though. Café de Paris = extortionate. €7 for a Coke!! gorgeous restaurants though. F1 track, very exciting, busy busy. lots of people, lots of traffic. Designer shops everywhere. clearly very wealthy. Cool :)

Sorry for delay!

Hellooooo world out there!

Sorry it's taken me ages to get back on this thing, time has flown by in hindsight! Can't possibly remember everything there was to update you all on, sorry :s but will have a go at key things!

- Have recently discovered my faaaavourite parts of Paris, after much awesome exploring with Keyla, amongst others :) new favourite places are : the 4th arr. (the Marais) - vintage shops aplenty, gorgeous little winding backstreets which look beautiful in the summer shade, with Italian ice cream parlours and little bookshops galore - Place des Vosges is an amazing square to lounge in on a sunny afternoon - seems to be the place to hang out, the equivalent of College Green for the Bristolians among you! 

The Bastille is also a fave :D, a wicked market on Saturdays with loooads of arty things to admire, and a lovely stall selling beautiful silk skirts (I got mine 'student price', I was assured!) run by a legend of a Frenchman, who tolerated my indecisiveness for most of an afternoon! Also provided with commentary on the stalls by a crazy man who wanders around wearing a pair of the market's more extrovert sunglasses. Hilarious! The Indiana café/bar/resto on the corner is a favourite - happy hour from 5 til 8pm and YUMMY Mexican food (my favourite!), with a lunch offer on Mon-Fri 12-5pm, a meal and a coffee for €11. Although, I have recently discovered after trying to buy in more fully to the Parisian lifestyle, that I am not a fan of espresso - although it does give me a fun buzz for an afternoon!

Parmentier is a favourite area too - Barbershop restaurant (soo cool, vintage and chilled and awesome!) recently provided me with an AMAZING swordfish (yes, I discovered a taste for it in Corfu last September, thanks to Quinny for that one!), seriously, one of the most BEAUTIFUL things I have eaten in a very long time! €15 and I would pay that any day for it!

Soooo, in summary, have been getting out and about a lot more since Easter; other coursemates have come out of the woodwork claiming they have nothing to do either, so I've managed to rope them into exploring the city with me! And oh it has paid off :) live music, wicked people and beautiful sights, and awesome food! (Yeah, we all know I'm a bit of a gourmande...) 

Weather is pretty dull now actually :( has been since after Easter really..! Though it was warm enough yesterday that Tom, Lydia and I (my latest visitors :) ) had a nap on the grass at Trocadero under the Eiffel Tower...though we were awakened by spots of rain...humid but cloudy and threatening has been the order of the day of late. Hopefully that will perk up soon!

You may have gathered from this that there's been no progress with the strikes, aside from the fact that my coursemate emailed a group of us the other day saying she'd been emailed by a woman from Paris Uni saying they'd been putting up lecture notes online since the strikes started to tide us over, only someone had neglected to tell us this along the way..!! So I wasn't very impressed with that, as you can imagine...But oh well, that's happened now, and I have had a lot of time to myself to explore :) My friend notified Manchester Uni of this and their response was basically "Oh dear, that's a shame they didn't tell you that, but never mind, you weren't to know so it doesn't matter that you haven't done it", so at least we're off the hook for not having known.

I fly out to Nice on Thursday evening to visit Steph for a week! Can't wait - will be really nice to explore a part of France I've never been to before; to have a change of scenery, and also to have some time with Steph :) it's been weird not seeing her at all since Barcelona, aside from our quick catch up in Manchester a few weeks ago! So I hope the weather down there is nice; I had a peek at the forecast and seems similar to here, but they do seem subject to change lately, so fingers crossed!

Have booked my Eurostar trip back to the UK once and for all, on the 31st of May! Can't quite believe it's that close to being over, in hindsight...seems to have gone so fast when I look back! Naturally am quite disappointed about the whole debacle of the Sorbonne; would have loved to have studied here, but alas. Nevertheless, it has given me the time to frolic in a gorgeous city buzzing with culture, and discover some of its more hidden delights :) when the weather's nice, obviously! Though at least there are the museums and galleries for the rainy days :) not to mention the alarmingly cheap (for Paris - and the UK, come to that!) cinema down at Place d'Italie - I had heard it rumoured, but Keyla and I checked it out in the flesh last week, and lo and behold, something to the tune of €3,60 for a young person under 26!!! Bargainous!! So that may be on the cards for tomorrow...

What else to report..? Oh, flat situation is lovely, though there have been some changes....older sister Assia and boyfriend Nej had a bit of an argument over Easter, so he no longer lives here...which is a shame cause he was a legend, but it's quite nice having a girly flat too. They've managed to rent out the spare room to Celia, a dancer from Province who moved in last week, and is really lovely :) and now younger sister Nadia has found herself a studio, so moves out sometime this week, I think..! Which will be sad, as she's really nice, and I feel like I've got closer to her the past month or so. Assia is currently on holiday in Andalusia; she took a 10 day break because she was working loads before Easter and to clear her head about recent events etc., which I think was a really good thing. So hopefully she's off enjoying herself at the mo!

Have been looking round a lot of flats more inside Paris with Keyla recently; she wants to move closer in, as she's in a little town outside Paris called Plaisir at the mo, and has finished her job out there and apparently there was nothing else to do there lol, so she wants to be nearer the action! Is proving difficult though; it's sooo hard to find a decent place in Paris. There's always something not quite right, be it the housemate, the location, a lack of internet... I hope she manages to sort something out soon. We have said to her that Nadia's room will soon be free! She is considering it, but wants to be a bit closer in if possible, which is fair enough; I would love to be too, but it's so hard to find somewhere, especially if you don't want to pay an arm and a leg for it....

Anyways, will sign off for now; long update! Will try and be a bit more regular with posts; though as I say, going away on Thursday for a week and internet may be limited, knowing what Steph's old brick of a laptop is like :p! Then have Mum coming to stay when I get back for a long weekend, then will have just under a week to occupy myself before I come back to Blighty! Crazy how time is flying! (Though I have to admit, it was my plan to be proactive this month so I didn't get bored - it has certainly paid off!) 

Love you all loads, see you soon!! Also need to update you soon on my summer plans - am hopping about the continent then too..! :p

Loads of love and hugs xxxxxxxxxxx